


A Lot Like Yesterday, a Lot Like Never

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, M/M, episode s02ep22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 04:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first twenty-four hours -- or so -- after season 2 episode 22 ends. (SPOILER ALERT!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lot Like Yesterday, a Lot Like Never

> [ _Twenty-nine._ ]

> It takes a few moments for the blurry figures on the clock to turn into numbers Danny's tired eyes can actually read. Doing the math doesn't take any time at all — twenty-nine hours — which is probably pathetic, that Danny's keeping track still, but he's too worn out to really give a fuck how pathetic it might or might not be.

> Twenty-nine hours. Steve's been back for twenty-nine hours now.

> Home — in his house — for three hours and forty-five minutes.

> Asleep for three hours and ten minutes.

> The blurry "4" at the right side of the clock flips to a "5". _Three hours and eleven minutes._  
> 

> Danny hooks his leg a little more firmly over Steve's thigh and lowers his head again until it's resting crowded up against Steve's shoulder. He should be asleep. He's supposed to be sleeping — he _needs_ sleep — but he needs this more.

> _This._ Steve, here, _home,_ not going anywhere.

> He doesn't really give a fuck how pathetic that might — or maybe even might not — be.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Two — less than two. Less than two fucking hours._ ]

Danny isn't in the mood to be fair. "So you're shooing us away like we're flies at your Wo Fat picnic? What if we don't want to be shooed, you jerk?"

"Danny, there isn't any point. You guys might as well call it a day. I'll catch up with you tomorrow." Steve rolls his shoulders a little; for a moment he looks wiped out. "I hope," he adds, which is, seriously, just about the last straw.

"You 'hope'. If there's a Dear Danno letter on my desk tomorrow —"

"There won't be."

"Like I can believe you? You didn't find Shelburne."

"I won't go looking for Shelburne tomorrow, Danny, I promise." 

"Yeah? Just so you know, we're going to be talking about that. In depth."

"Looking forward to it."

"If I were you, buddy, I wouldn't be," Danny says, right before one of the ubiquitous asshole suits comes up to them and says, "Commander," with that agency tone in his voice that makes it clear Steve is nothing more than a convenience — or, according to Danny's bosom pal at the CIA, an inconvenience — and completely disposable as soon as he's been sucked dry of all possible use to them.

It pisses Danny off.

Or maybe he's pissed off at the grin Steve throws him before he walks off with the fucker, like he really _is_ looking forward to the ass-kicking Danny's got planned for him, the ass-kicking that over the course of the past interminable month has evolved from 'Major' to 'Epic? We left Epic behind two weeks ago, you bastard; now we're up to Apocalyptic'.

Or maybe he's pissed off that Steve is taking the suits and their fucking inhumanity — and his own place, his fucked-up I'm Not a Person, I'm a Tool, It's My Duty _place_ in the fucking suits' fucked-up world-view — completely in stride. 

It's only when his hands start to throb that Danny notices he's clenched them into white-knuckled fists. Steve's gone, walked off with the agency asshole towards God knows how many hours of debriefing and red tape with the CIA and Interpol and probably everybody from Homeland Security and the Governor's office down to…fuck, the Boy Scouts, for all Danny knows, or the Greater Honolulu Knitting Society. 

Maybe he's also pissed off — just a little — that Steve's right: the preliminary paperwork on the Yakuza showdown at Dillingham is done, or done enough for tonight, anyway, and there's no reason for any of them to stick around when they're not going to get another glimpse of their fearless returned idiot leader until the powers that be are done with him.

So he leaves. They all leave. 

Without Steve.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Two hours. Which is a lot less than six fucking months._ ] 

Ridiculously, Danny feels lonelier on the drive home than he's felt all month. He cruises the radio stations for shitty pop music, but even hitting the jackpot with "Sexy Eyes" doesn't help.

He'd sworn — _sworn_ — that when Steve got back, he wouldn't take his eyes off the sneaky son of a bitch for the next six months. At least.

So he hadn't literally meant it — that doesn't make it any easier to be driving home without Steve right now.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Four hours. Four and a half._ ]  
[ _Five hours, six. Seven, eight, nine._ ]  
[ _The whole goddamned night._ ] 

Every time he closes his eyes he's being stifled by the hood being pulled down over his head; he's sitting zip-tied to that chair, completely fucking helpless, watching the daylight bleed out of the sky and picturing Steve's plane exploding somewhere over the ocean. Then he's picturing Mr. Soulless CIA Big-Shot — _That plane doesn't exist_ — leaving his soulless office one evening in the not too distant future and never making it home, picturing wiping that soulless little smirk off Mr. Big-Shot's face — or maybe letting him keep it as the last expression he'll ever have; it'll give Max something to speculate about when he does the autopsy.

Every time he closes his eyes he's losing Steve just when he's finally about to get him back.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Eleven hours._ ] 

HQ is bright with the early morning sunlight, and quiet. Danny puts his monster-size cup of Kona on his desk and gives in to a yawn and a drawn-out, spine-popping stretch. He feels like leftover shit warmed up and served on burnt toast, and he knows exactly who to blame for that.

The door to Steve's office is still closed, like it's been all month, but it looks…different this morning. Danny's still staring at it when Kono wanders in, followed almost immediately by Chin. Their eyes go to Steve's door, too, and Kono's shoulders drop, just a little.

"Steve still tied up?" Chin looks pinched around the lips and he's carefully not looking at Kono, and Danny winces. Adam Noshimuri, right. Kono really put her foot in that one. Not like Danny can afford to talk, he knows how easy it is to get involved with somebody against your better judgment — but the acting head of the Yakuza? That's…pushing it. Chin's right to be as worried as he clearly is.

"Apparently," Danny answers Chin, then walks over to Kono to pat her on the arm. "You okay?"

"Sure." Kono sounds as tough and together as always, but she glances at Steve's door again and her eyes go wistful. 

Danny gets that. Danny gets it, because Steve understands coloring outside the lines. He might rip Kono a new one — something Danny's pretty sure Chin will be doing too, if he hasn't already — but some part of Steve will always understand being driven by emotion, even if he'll never admit it, and right now Kono needs that understanding. Chin's undoubtedly got 'Protective', 'Worried',' Logical', and 'Fully Aware of the Probable Consequences of a Cop Consorting with a Yakuza Boss' covered, so Kono's counting on Steve for something more.

The same kind of absolution he gave Jenna in the end, maybe. 

Danny sighs. _He's_ the one who's never forgiven Jenna, but he can't say he doesn't understand that love can wind up taking a person all kinds of dark and lawless places. He just wishes that was something Kono hadn't had to learn so early in life.

"Hey," he says, gesturing towards his office, "you want to talk about it?"

Kono gives him a small smile and shakes her head. "Can we wait for Steve?" she asks. "I'd really rather go over it all just once, with everybody."

"Understandable," Danny says. "Might be a while, though." He claps Chin on the shoulder on his way back to his office and the quart of coffee cooling its heels on his desk. "You okay, Chin?"

"I will be, brah," Chin answers, with a rueful half-smile. " _We_ will be."

"I know that." Danny does know that. He glances at Steve's office door again, and he does, he really does know that.

It's just taking a little time to sink in so that he can really _believe_ it.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Fourteen and a half hours._ ] 

_"Partner."_

Danny doesn't recognize the number Steve's calling from, but he recognizes the locked-down, on-a-mission quality of Steve's voice.

_"Just checking in. Wo Fat's being processed into Halawa this morning, then I've got another couple of rounds of meetings to deal with, so it looks like it'll be a while before I'm done here. This evening, if I'm lucky."_

"Terrific," Danny says. He scrubs a hand over his face. "Yeah, sure, you do what you gotta —"

_"Hey, sorry, I have to go. Later, D."_

Danny punches the 'end' button on his phone viciously. Then he heads out the door, pausing only long enough to stick his head into Chin's office and tell Chin where he's going.

At least he doesn't have to tell Chin why he's going there. He's pretty sure Chin would go himself if Danny wasn't going.

Like there's any chance in hell Danny wouldn't be going.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Sixteen hours and change._ ] 

"Danny? What are you doing here?" 

Danny's forced to admit that hurts a little, Steve's surprise, even though he was expecting it.

"What do you think I'm doing here? Get in."

Steve doesn't even make a play for the keys, he just opens the car door and folds himself into the passenger's seat and that hurts just a little bit more. Danny pushes away from the hood of the Camaro where he's been leaning, waiting for Steve, and walks around to the driver's side, trying not to think about how tired Steve looks underneath his patented I'm a Motherfucking _Robot_ game face.

He also tries not to look back at the prison buildings across the parking lot, tries not to remember Steve in prison orange, tries — when that fails — to replace that memory with the mental picture of Wo Fat in an orange jumpsuit and shackles. 

When he opens the door he grabs a paper sack out of the back seat and hands it to Steve before he slides into the driver's seat and turns the key in the ignition.

"What's this?" Steve doesn't even open the bag, the moron, just stares at it like it's a baffling artifact from another planet.

"Eat," Danny orders as he pulls the car out of the parking lot. "I'm betting it counts as breakfast as well as lunch." He knows he's not wrong when Steve just keeps staring at the bag like an idiot.

"What, they'll give you the third degree for days at a time, but they won't feed you? What about the Geneva Convention, huh?" Not that Danny genuinely expects any _agency_ to honor basic human rights anymore, not after yesterday's little demonstration.

"No, there was food," Steve says, frowning a little. "I was just busy."

Which translates as 'too focused to care about anything except for wrapping Wo Fat up so tightly the fucker won't be able to draw a deep breath for the rest of his worthless life'. Danny's down with that — Christ, is he down with that — but he knows Steve well enough to be aware of just how far past empty the needle has to be by now on Steve's personal fuel gauge. He can't do anything about getting Steve some sleep, but he can at least shove some calories down his throat. One way or another.

Steve still isn't opening the bag and Danny gears himself up to start shoving, only to stop cold before he starts. This isn't just Steve running on two-day-old fumes, this is Steve who's just locked up the SOB responsible for an entire lifetime's worth of shit — for his parents' deaths, for Jenna's death, for the bunker scene in North Korea that Danny still has nightmares about — and whatever Steve is feeling right now, it has to be a complicated mess. This isn't some kind of fairy tale, where the good guy slays the dragon or whatever and Hey, look at that, suddenly he's living happily ever after. 

Danny clears his throat. There's so fucking much he wants to say, but now isn't the time. He ends up going with "Eat" again, like an optimist, but at least it's not opening up a potential can of emotional worms right before Steve has to go back and face more asswipe suits.

Steve puts the bag down. "Later," he says. He rests his hand on his thigh, but his hand isn't exactly _resting_ ; the fingers are digging into his leg hard enough to make Danny wince in sympathy for Steve's quadriceps. "Danny…. Look, there's something I want to do — need to do, before we head back. You mind?"

 _You asshole,_ Danny thinks, _Are you actually serious?_ But now really isn't the time. "Of course I don't mind," he says instead, because it's true. "Just, you know, drink the smoothie, at least, okay? It'll make me feel better."

Steve snorts. "Is this a thing now, you trying to tell me when to eat?" But he picks up the bag again and pulls the smoothie out, drinks a little of it.

"Yeah, maybe," Danny says.

It's something, anyway. Danny's figuring it's as close to a win as he's likely to get today.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _A little less than seventeen hours._ ] 

Danny isn't surprised that he's standing here waiting for Steve.

He isn't surprised that his "Do you want me to —" had gotten interrupted by Steve shaking his head and saying, "I'll be back in a few minutes."

Isn't surprised in the least that Steve had walked off towards his father's grave alone.

Sometimes Danny really wants to just kick Steve in his fatheaded go-it-on-his-own ass.

Instead he's standing beside the Camaro cursing everyone and everything that turned Steve into such a painfully self-contained piece of work. He knows exactly what Steve will be like when he gets back to the car — focused, self-sufficient, all business. And hurting deep inside, but completely incapable of sharing that load.

He could hate Steve for that sometimes. Sometimes he _does_ hate Steve for that.

Maybe not today — okay, definitely not today. But some days? Yeah. Some days he does.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Nineteen hours. Oh, Jesus._ ] 

Danny stares at the photos displayed on the wall screens. He's not alone; Chin and Kono are staring at them too.

Charred pieces of fuselage, large and small, are scattered near a holy mess of cockpit and sheared-off tree trunks. A couple of the pieces are still smoldering.

"Emergency landing, my ass," Danny says. His voice sounds strained, even to himself. "That's a _plane crash_ , not a fucking 'emergency landing'. I'm going to kill him."

Kono's eyes are wide as she keeps staring at the picture in the middle, the one that gives all too clear an idea of the force with which the nose of the plane plowed into the ground. "I think the plane already almost did that for you, brah," she says. Chin puts his hand on her shoulder and she leans into it.

Danny wouldn't mind having someone to lean on himself right about now.

Steve, say. Danny wouldn't mind leaning on Steve right now at all.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Twenty-two and a half hours, for fuck's sake._ ] 

_"Danny, go home. It'll be another couple of hours. There really isn't any point for you to sit around the office waiting on me."_

"Are these people for real? Another couple of — Steve, enough already. This is borderline sadistic — have they even let you clean up? No, don't tell me, let me guess: you're still wearing those same classified cargo pants and you've still got dried blood on your face, and none of them gives a flying —"

_"Don't worry about it, Danny. I've had worse."_

"That I can believe. I just…. You shouldn't have to."

 _"Hey, I'm okay."_ Steve's voice gets a little softer, and Danny can't help it, he relaxes a little. It's the first time Steve's sounded like Human-Being Steve instead of Government-Ninja-Robot Steve since this whole debriefing shit started more than twenty hours ago.

"Okay. Okay," Danny says, sighing. "Just call me when you're done. I'll come pick you up."

_"Nah. I'll catch a ride. Call a cab, whatever. Don't worry about it."_

"Steven."

 _"Fine, Danny, I'll call you. Even if it's three in the morning and pouring rain. Happy now?"_ Steve sounds exasperated, and Danny relaxes even more. 

"Ecstatic. Go, finish your hush-hush spy stuff, so I can come pick you up in the middle of the night in the pouring rain."

 _"Good-_ bye, _Daniel."_

Chin turned the tech table off half an hour ago before he left and the crash photos aren't up on the wall any longer, but Danny still pauses on his way out of the office, closes his eyes, and grips the edge of the table until his fingers hurt.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Twenty-five hours. Twenty-four hours plus one. More than a day already._ ] 

_"I know you had your heart set on picking me up, Danno,"_ — Danny can hear the smirk in Steve's voice — _"but I called a cab anyway. I'm on my way; I'll be home in twenty."_

The self-sufficient son of a bitch.

Danny knows himself pretty well by now. He's got his anger — his serious, rational, and completely justified anger — at Steve's Dear Danno disappearance into some kind of Silent Running, Whether I'm Still Alive or Not Is Classified mode under control. For tonight, although once Steve gets enough sleep under his belt to be able to give Danny his full and undivided attention? Danny has a six-inch-thick stack of fucking cue cards ready, and Steve is going to listen to each and every fucking point Danny makes and goddamn _hear_ him for a change.

The thing is, he's got a different kind of anger going right now, one that has to do with scattered bits of airplane and a smug son of a bitch who calmly engineered it for Steve to be a crossed-off item on his "doesn't exist" checklist; has to do with Steve being —

Back. 

Jesus, he's pissed off because Steve's back.

No, of course he isn't. He's pissed off because Steve's been back for twenty-five fucking hours, and he still isn't _back_. Danny's done waiting.

He's just _done_. He wants Steve _now_.

 _Steve_. Not some badass government ninja classified spy person. Not some robot. 

Just _Steve_.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Twenty-five and a half hours._ ] 

"Hey." Steve comes in through the kitchen door and closes it, then just stands there, looking like he would give in and fall down if he could just figure out _how_. He offers Danny a ghost of a smile.

Danny shakes his head from his vantage point in the doorway to the living room. "You're a mess, babe."

"Nice. I feel all warm and fuzzy now, thank you." Steve's smile widens a little. And just like that, Danny's done for.

"Get over here, you," he says, because the doorway to the living room is closer to the stairs than the outside door to the kitchen is, and he needs to get Steve upstairs and horizontal — and sleeping, he hopes; maybe even _both_ of them sleeping — sooner rather than later.

Steve makes an exhausted-looking beeline towards Danny. Then he's got his octopus arms around Danny, his head dropping to nuzzle against Danny's head, and Danny has to steel his resolve. "You know what," he says, "let's table this temporarily. You smell worse than the inside of a locker at my uncle Manny's gym, and both of us are dead on our feet. Upstairs, shower, sleep, okay?"

Steve sighs, his breath a warm gust brushing across Danny's ear. "Sure. Shower, sleep. Just warn me in advance — is there going to be any yelling involved? Not that there's any reason for you to yell at me, but that's never stopped you in the past."

"You bet there will be yelling involved, yelling of a caliber you've never experienced before, McGarrett. Your ears will be bleeding." Steve sighs again, and Danny almost chuckles. "But not tonight. I'm saving that for tomorrow."

"Very magnanimous of you," Steve says. 

"I can be magnanimous." 

"You can, huh?" Steve ducks his head down, his lips searching out Danny's mouth, and Danny lets him — welcomes him, he should admit that to himself, he's not fooling anybody here — but he doesn't let the kiss go on for very long.

"Toothpaste," he says firmly, pulling away. It's as good a reason as any, and also happens to be true. "Toothpaste, brushing of teeth, before any further oral activity. Not to mention that shower."

"You love me anyway," Steve says. The corner of his mouth is doing that smug little uptilt thing it does and Danny's heart twists.

"No, I put up with you, there's a difference. Upstairs." 

"You do too love me." Steve says, smirking, as Danny gives him a push into the living room.

Danny rolls his eyes and pushes Steve again. "Upstairs," he says.

But he's smiling. All the way up the stairs as he prods Steve's back to keep him moving, he's smiling.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Twenty-six hours. Almost twenty-six._ ] 

"What, you showering with me?" Steve stops stripping off his clothes and turns to look at Danny, his eyebrows raised. "I thought we were tabling things."

"Yeah, we are," Danny answers, distracted. "Keep stripping."

"What?" Steve says again, and Danny sighs.

"I want to see the damage."

Steve just stares at him blankly, and Danny rolls his eyes again. "The damage from your 'emergency landing', you moron. You didn't walk away from that without some bruises."

Steve makes a face, but he finishes taking off his clothes. The body Danny's gotten himself so stupidly addicted to is a lot more colorful than Danny likes to see it — too many bruises, but nothing that looks too ominous.

"Told you I'm okay," Steve says, like the bruises haven't even registered in the underdeveloped pain centers of his idiotic SEAL brain, and Danny says, "Yeah. Yeah, I see that," and nods his head, backs the fuck out of the bathroom and closes the door behind himself carefully.

Then he goes and sits down on the bed and buries his head in his hands.

"Hey, you okay?"

Danny looks up. 

"Danny, your hands are shaking. What's going on?"

Steve's standing in the bathroom doorway, naked, bruised all to shit, _alive_ , and he doesn't have a fucking clue, the son of a bitch.

"Danny? Come on, man."

Danny huffs out a choked laugh. "You want to know what's going on? I saw photos of the plane, Steven. How the fuck you and Wo Fat walked away from that…."

"I don't know," Steve says, crossing the room and crouching down to look up at Danny, his hand on Danny's thigh. "Just lucky, I guess. Maybe because I eat right? You should remember that next time you have malasadas for breakfast."

He offers Danny a tentative smile and Danny can't help it. He thumps Steve's biceps with the back of his hand, hard — not as satisfying as a punch, but it still rocks Steve back on his heels a little, which is something — and says, "You fucking asshole. Do not do this to me — to any of us — again, you understand me? I don't care how classified it is, how important it is for you to stay in mission mode where you don't even let yourself remember you're a real person who has people who fucking _worry_ about you, worry about whether you're alive or dead. I don't care how used to going it alone you are. I don't care how 'out of the game' your head is, how obsessed you are. You do not do this again."

"Danny." Steve's got his arms wrapped around Danny now like he's holding on for dear life. Danny wants to pull away, tell Steve to fuck off; he _wants_ to, he….

He wants Steve to stay right there, holding on to him. To stay. To just _stay_.

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "Danny, I'm sorry." 

"Yeah, so?" Danny's voice cracks on the words, goddamn it.

Steve sits back on his heels and rubs his forehead with his hand. "What you're asking, though — I can't…."

"You can't promise," Danny finishes flatly.

Steve drops his head for a moment. Then he lifts it again, his eyes intense. "I can promise to try. To try not to, I mean."

Danny holds Steve's gaze for what feels like fucking forever before he nods, and the tight line of Steve's shoulders relaxes a little. "Go," he says, nudging Steve with his leg, "get your shower. You need some sleep." 

Steve puts his hand on Danny's thigh and squeezes it before he takes his bruised body back to the bathroom. He's walking steadily enough, but after a moment Danny follows him into the bathroom anyway. To spot him in the shower, Danny tells himself, but he knows that's only part of it — mostly he just needs to _see_ Steve. To watch him.

To watch over him.

Because he knows now, even more than before, just how tenuous Steve is in his life. 

How tenuous Steve is in his own goddamned life.

And the weight of that feels like it's killing him.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

[ _Twenty-nine hours and counting._ ] 

Steve's ribcage moves steadily up and down below Danny's splayed fingers, rising and falling in an unhurried rhythm that Danny's slowly — slowly — beginning to find hypnotic.

Steve will do this again. Do something like this, something stupid, selfish, self-sacrificing, _insane_. Sooner or later he'll do it again, no matter how hard he tries not to. Danny's not done with the subject, fuck no, but at least Steve was honest with him about how much — how little — he could promise. 

Loving Rachel wasn't easy, either. Cops know, none better, that the world isn't a friendly place, and Danny knew far too many ways things could go wrong, could turn into tragedy — wrong place, wrong time, that was all it took. Danny would come home after a case like that — a vic who'd stopped at the corner market to pick up a gallon of milk or who'd been trying to flag down a cab, maybe somebody who'd just been walking down a sidewalk on her way to work — and lie awake half the night, scared shitless, watching Rachel sleep.

Turns out it's no different with a guy who can make his own Molotov cocktails, pull off a solo Joe White-rescuing raid on Yakuza headquarters, and walk away alive and virtually unhurt from crash landing a plane in a jungle. Danny's still scared shitless.

Sometimes — not often, but sometimes — he wishes it wasn't worth it. But it is.

_Twenty-nine hours and forty-eight minutes._

It's worth it. Underneath Danny's hand Steve's ribcage rises and falls. Rises and falls.

Rises and falls. 

Steve's worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: The title is a quote from _The Things They Carried_ by Tim O'Brien (a collection of stories about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War; I hadn't heard of this book before, but Googling it has certainly made me want to read it).


End file.
